I'm always somewhat baffled by the fact that every web service seems compelled to offer an email service alongside its core offering. Whatever I sign up for, flickr to share photos being my latest example, Friends Reunited being another, as well as being able to share photos/contact old friends, I can access yet another email account. Do they really believe that I'll decide to use my flickr account as my primary email account, informing all my friends of my new contact details?
Leave mail to the experts - Google, Yahoo!, AOL, your local ISP or Rob. Concentrate on your core offering and make that as good as it can be, rather than trying to create an all-encompassing world that locks me in. My view is that offering a bunch of services in parallel to your core offering will dilute the offering as opposed to increasing people's loyalty. I'm not going to go to Friends Reunited unless I want to contact an old school-friend. I'm not going to flickr unless I want to share some photos. And if I want to update my professional contact details, I'll pop along to Linked In.
There are two types of loyalty as I see it: positive loyalty and negative loyalty. Positive loyalty makes the consumer happy to be using a company's services. In the UK, I have a loyalty to BP (not sure why), Sainsbury's over Tesco, the Gap, Tetley (beer) to name but a few. Negative loyalty occurs when people use the service, but only because they can't get out of it. Apart from annoying the hell out of me, this is why I've never signed up to AOL. They lock you in through their browser and software, and using the internet at my parents' house always frustrates me hugely for this very reason. Doing anything outside the world of AOL is hard work, too hard, they hope, for you to bother. For a while back in the early 90s, BT was in a similar position. In a similar way, Microsoft has done the same, although I'm much happier with the world that they have created.
Although not directly related, in the offline world, the offering of services in parallel to a company's core offering reminds me of the fact that shoe repairers also cut keys. From a user perspective, it's rare that the two services are needed at the same time. The lathe (to buff-up the shoes and cut the keys) is the only common element. I wonder if there are any shops that specialise in one or the other?
